Surgical fasteners are frequently used in a variety of surgical procedures in which different portions of tissue, ligaments or the like must be brought together and held in place. For example, surgical fasteners have been used to repair cartilage or ligament tears, such as with shoulder or knee injuries. Surgical fasters may also be used to approximate tissue, such as during various pelvic floor repair procedures. They also provide a convenient and efficient way to secure various prosthetic devices to tissue, such as meshes used for hernia repair.
Surgical fasteners are typically deployed using a surgical “gun” or applicator that is designed to embed the given fastener in the proper place within the body. These surgical applicators typically include one or more sharp or penetrating element that is inserted into the tissue to be approximated, ligament, or the like, and a deployment mechanism that will subsequently drive the fastener out of the applicator and embed it into the tissue through the passageway made by the penetrating element(s).
One such surgical fastener and applicator are described in detail in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 10/876,991 and 10/877,669, which were filed on Jun. 25, 2004, and which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety. FIGS. 1 and 2 illustrate this fastener and surgical applicator, and FIGS. 7 and 8 illustrate the fastener being loaded into the gun. As shown in FIG. 1, the surgical fastener 10 includes first and second anchors 12, 14 and a connector portion 16 extending therebetween. At least first and second connector segments 18a, 18b of the fastener are resiliently biased so that when the surgical fastener is straightened by an external force (such as occurs during application of the fastener with the applicator), it is biased to return to the configuration shown in FIG. 1. The fastener is otherwise somewhat flexible, as it is preferably made of polypropylene of other similar plastic material. FIG. 2 illustrates a surgical applicator that can be used to deploy the fastener of FIG. 1. The applicator 20 includes first and second needles 21, 22 having a pointed or tissue penetrating distal end and having channels 23, 24 therein.
Referring now to FIG. 8, to load the surgical fastener 10 into applicator 20, the first and second anchors 12, 14 must be inserted into the first and second channels 23, 24 of the first and second needles 21, 22. This is a difficult task, however, because the surgical fastener is flexible and difficult to hold steady during loading. Further, much care must be exercised when loading the anchors into the channels to avoid being cut by the sharp distal ends of the needles. For one known H-type flexible fastener, the mechanism developed for loading the fasteners into an applicator involved preloading the fastener into a needle for the applicator, and separately packaging this needle/fastener combination. The preloaded needles are then inserted into the applicator to thereby load the applicator. This type of system and applicator, as described more fully in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,984,097 and 6,047,826, does not address safety concerns relating to loading the fasteners directly into the sharp needles, and requires a new needle for every fastener. Thus, it would be desirable to provide an improved, reliable, simpler and safer mechanism for loading surgical fasteners into a surgical applicator.